Spain's civil war

Painful memories

Arguments over the true legacy of the civil war have only just begun

THE memorial notices in Spanish newspapers in recent weeks constitute a warning that some things in the past, at least, have not been forgotten. Just over 70 years after the Spanish civil war broke out in July 1936, the ghosts of that ghastly conflict are back.

“Tortured and murdered by the Marxist hordes,” reads one notice, published recently in El Mundo, a right-wing newspaper. Others, usually in more left-wing newspapers, speak of the mass killings that were carried out by followers of the rebel general who later became Spain's dictator, Francisco Franco.

These sudden, bitter reminders of blood that was shed long ago are more than a sign that 2006 was an anniversary year. The Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has decided that public recognition should be given not only to victims of the civil war but also to those of the 36-year dictatorship that followed, ending with Franco's death in 1975.

A draft law before the Spanish parliament proposes to name victims but not those who harmed them. The law would create a parliament-appointed committee of experts charged with the task of identifying victims wronged by either side in the conflict. The list could easily stretch into the tens of thousands. It ranges from those killed by death squads operating on both sides to political prisoners, forced labourers, children who were forced into adoption and victims of torture.

Mr Zapatero, whose own grandfather was shot by a Francoist firing squad, has walked right into a minefield. Spain's centre-right opposition accuses him of indulging in “moth-ball” politics, and of trying to revise history and revive old hatreds. Yet campaigners on the left, some of whom have been exhuming corpses from the hundreds of mass graves that were left by Franco's firing squads, say he is not going far enough. They want to see the sentences of Francoist tribunals formally overturned. Even some of Mr Zapatero's friends blanch at this. “It is all a big mistake,” says one big media supporter.

Underlying this quarrel is the whole approach that Spain took in moving from fascism to democracy. There were no truth commissions, and Francoist officials were not tried for past excesses. Unlike countries in eastern Europe, Latin America or South Africa that have made the same journey, Spain chose simply to turn the page of history. An unwritten agreement, known as the pact of forgetting, has meant that mere mention of the civil war has been kept out of everything, from politics to dinner-party conversation.

That pact has now been broken. In the past few weeks, an angry parliamentary debate has greeted Mr Zapatero's proposed law. This shows that differences over who was to blame for the three-year civil war, and over the dictatorship that followed, still run deep. Indeed, some fret that Mr Zapatero has opened a Pandora's box of troubles. But others see the debate as a healthy sign that Spain's democracy is mature enough to discuss the difficult recent past. Either way, Mr Zapatero himself has yet to show that he knows his way out of the historic minefield.